By Sodeinde Temidayo David
The newly launched iPhone 13 drew shocking reactions from Apple fans as it includes a new camera feature called cinematic mode, designed to help filmmakers and amateurs shoot and edit better footage from their devices.
This was seen yesterday at the annual September event of Apple Inc, which witnessed the launch of the iPhone 13 series in four different variants – iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro, and iPhone 13 Pro Max.
As it has always been, the new series come with increased battery life and efficiency, as well as brighter and better displays.
This year brings some new additions that are set to shake up the camera market once again, with the new iPhone 13 cinematic mode.
The cinematic mode is powered by the mobile new A15 Bionic chip that comes with every model of the iPhone 13 and has a battery life of up to 2.5 hours longer.
The Bionic processor uses its processing power and multi-frame image processing pipeline to create a depth of field effect.
The cinematic mode is more like a portrait mode for video with smart focus, tracks on the focus of different objects and features on the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max models.
The iPhone 13 and 13 Pro models, coming with large lenses, use the stereo disparity between the wide and ultra-wide cameras to generate a depth map, which software can later use to selectively blur the foreground and background and simulate any chosen f-stop.
The larger sensors in these phones will lend the footage shallower native depth-of-field than previous phones, the depth map allows for additional computational blur much like the Portrait Mode that is so popular on smartphone devices these days.
The iPhone predictably switches focus rapidly based on the subjects in your scene, blurring the background, without any work from the user.
This new mode allows users to adjust the aperture, or f-stop, to change the depth-of-field after a video is been shot.
It also allows users to change what is in focus, or rack focus from one subject to another, after the fact, including the level of bokeh applied in videos.
Cinematic mode is on the back camera, and also on the front camera, and shoots in Dolby Vision HDR.
The iPhone 13 release date is September 24 for all four models. The iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max will be available to pre-order on Friday, September 17 in the U.S. and U.K.
In terms of the starting prices, the iPhone 13 mini costs $699 (N389,343), iPhone 13 costs $799 (N445,043), iPhone 13 Pro goes for $999 (N556,443) and iPhone 13 Pro Max costs $1,099 (N612,143).
The exchange rate of N557/$1 at the black market was used for the Dollar conversion.